What Does The Trump Presidency Mean For Australian Politics?

There's a whole lot of soul-searching going on.

Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg'We have had Brexit. We have had the rise of One Nation. Now we have had Trump.'

CANBERRA -- There's a whole lot of soul searching going on in Australian politics in light of the surprise Trump ascendancy in the U.S. Presidential election result.

Many federal ministers, MPs and Senators lined up in Canberra Thursday to officially welcome U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, but privately some shook their heads and whispered they were "numbed" by the Trump win.

Poised to challenge Tony Abbott in September 2015, he said: "What we have not succeeded in doing is translating those values into the policies and the ideas that will excite the Australian people and encourage them to believe and understand that we have a vision for their future".

But Andrew Hastie turned it on Labor, about moving too far to the left, citing issues like immigration and same-sex marriage.

"I think this is a repudiation of that progressive mindset," he told HuffPost Australia. "And we need to be very, very mindful of what the Australia people are thinking."

"I think what it shows though is that where you have a divided society, where you have people left behind the pace of economic change, you will see responses and more extreme political outcomes," Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said Thursday.

Labor just has to get past Shorten calling the now President-elect Trump "barking mad" and some of his policies "bonkers" during the campaign.

Bill Shorten's statement on Trump's win is strong; "If I see women being disrespected, people being discriminated, I'm going to call it out" pic.twitter.com/9KegB6qngy

"I certainly said that some of his views were extreme and I didn't agree with them but the American people have now spoken."

There are implications for plying the political trade -- with the Trump win showing a clear push back against the "political elite" -- for likely death of international trade deals involving the U.S. and for the U.S./Australia alliance as America appears to be going down a new isolationist path with Trump.

Australia will be "emphasising" to the Trump administration of the importance of the U.S./Australia alliance and the need for stability and leadership in the Asia-Pacific region.

"I see it as an opportunity rather than taking each one of the headline statements and saying well that's precisely the foreign policy," Foreign Minister Julie Bishop told Sky News.

"We will be working with the administration to point out the importance of continued U.S leadership in the Asia Pacific."

The U.S. is Australia's most strategically important and steadfast alliance partner, but with Trump and foreign policy, we are heading into the unknown with one of the important Trump campaign messages that allies should pull their own weight.

"The American nation is a force for good for the world. Has been for a long time and will continue to be," Nationals MP Andrew Broad said.

"I am very confident that the sun has come up, as Barack Obama has said. People have headed off to work in Australia, people headed off to work in America. We don't need to overstate that that world is going to end."

But the centrepiece of Barack Obama's pivot to Asia, the 12-nation trade pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), is expected to never become reality.

The TPP, which would have covered 40 percent of world trade including Australia, will be the biggest victim of Trump's solid anti-trade position. A protectionist policy which tapped into American concerns about jobs and debts to nations like China.

"Free-marketism is now dead," MP Bob Katter told reporters in Canberra. He's long been pushing a protectionist line in Australia and has been joined by a resurgent One Nation and the Nick Xenophon Team.

"The city suits in their tapestry towers have made a fortune by importing goods, replacing Australian industries and Australian jobs."

"They are the people responsible for the mass migration into the Australia which has undermined our pay and condition and taken our jobs away from us."

"Their day is now over."

Publicly, even in the wake of Trump's win, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has held out hope that the TPP could still be ratified by Congress. Katter accused the Turnbull Government of living in a collective delusion if it thinks the TPP can survive.

"He's learnt nothing, remembered nothing. Well, they are living in a stone age amongst skeletons and dinosaurs now ... the free-marketeers," he said.